


Excerpts from a Personal Journal

by OrdinaryBird



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos has anxiety, Cecil is Inhuman, M/M, cecilos - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 22:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3587121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrdinaryBird/pseuds/OrdinaryBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I think a personal record should help synchronize events I experience outside of the lab with my more formal notes." (Written for "Cecilos Day" of Carlos Appreciation Week)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excerpts from a Personal Journal

I am starting this journal for largely personal reasons.

It’s so exciting to be on the cutting edge of research! My notes have to be so formal all the time, and I haven’t really made a lot of friends yet, so I think this will be a valuable form of processing or something. Also, I think my watch was damaged somehow, and I feel a little out of sync here in a way I can’t easily explain (and in a way my team denies very specifically, meaning they’ve probably noticed but are scared to talk about it before we’ve done more research. Very thorough and cautious of them.). So I think a personal record should help synchronize events I experience outside of the lab with my more formal notes.

The community radio is certainly unusual around here. On the way to the lab this morning I thought I was listening to a story in the vein of Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast. That voice was too rich, too deep and engaging to be a community radio host. But then the voice on the radio started talking about me, in those molasses tones. He called my hair “perfect” and I didn’t really know what to do with that. Did I even wash it today?

And then I went to talk to the residents.   
So I’m looking down at this sea of faces, right, all hostile, and unsure and stuff, and that made me feel very frightened. I smiled at them. I tried not to stutter. And then I saw there was someone standing near the back, who was not hostile or unsure.

I’m not sure if he was really blushing or if his face was always like that. There was some kind of mark on his head, an ellipse of some kind, as far as I could see. His waist-coat fit tightly. Quite tightly. The sleeves of his light violet button down were rolled neatly past the elbows. He was staring at me, a disposable coffee cup halfway to his mouth, steam fogging his glasses slightly. I smiled again, in his direction particularly—he had a notepad and something…almost like a pen? It was a little too thin to be, but it was hard to tell at a distance—so I assumed he was a news reporter of some kind.

His face grew redder. His eyes widened behind his glasses, almost inhumanly wide (but that’s unfair, Carlos, you haven’t measured the orbital diameter of every human on the planet so don’t make assumptions until you do) and he looked away, quickly, then back, smiling widely and very, very red in the cheeks.

I don’t know anyone here yet but the rest of the team, so I’ve decided to focus heavily on my work. That’s served me pretty well since I finished undergrad. On my way back to the lab tonight, knowing I wouldn’t be able to sleep and deciding to get some work done, I turn the radio on—and he’s got all these compliments for me, right, and then he says he fell in love instantly. Instantly. When I smiled.  
ohmygod WHAT.

I almost put my car in a ditch, and I had to pull over and set my head against the steering wheel and breathe for a few minutes after hearing that.

But that was an anomaly, right? It’s probably just the lab coat. And this hair, which has a mind of its own at this point, making tousled, flirty promises my busy schedule can’t keep. So I’m going to keep things between us totally professional. We’re going to have to be in touch, because it seems like he’s the only one on the station who actually communicates with the town in any meaningful way. From what I’ve heard, he doesn’t have much of a grasp on “professional detachment”, so I will have to be extra vigilant to prevent any conflicts of interest. And I also need to look on Yelp for a decent barber.

I haven’t found a good place to get a coffee yet. I should ask the radio host— _no I should not, I will just taste all the coffee I find in Night Vale and eventually, through a very scientific process of elimination I will find suitable coffee with no informal assistance._

 

I keep forgetting to write in here. There’s just…a lot going on. Something is really off with time here and at least one house doesn’t actually exist, and also I still haven’t found a decent cup of coffee. I’ll have to dig out my travel mug and just bring my own.

I should probably finish unpacking. I’ve been cycling between the same three lab coats for a few weeks now and I should get some glasses out, because it would be very dangerous to mix up the chemistry beakers with the non-chemistry beakers, especially if it involves something I’m planning to consume.

The radio host’s name is Cecil. I have known this for a week now (somehow he has my cellphone number?) but I finally saved his number with a real name attached to it. I should probably start listening to the radio more, just to stay informed and give some shape to my week aside from sleep, food, caffeine and science. There are so few distractions here and I am getting so much done. But, a scientist always practices appropriate self care; I need to force myself into some leisure activities.

Also, I think there might be something about that voice. It sounds nice, and through a very elaborate process of scanning and careful analysis I think it has the ideal tonal range to satisfy the ears of an average human listener. But it’s more than just nice sounding. It has a very mild sedative effect, if I can use my team as a small, informal sample. It may even be a bit hypnotic. I wonder if it’s generated by the radio equipment or…? I have started recording the shows for later study and analysis. Especially since he appears to have convinced an entire town to passive-aggressively (and occasionally less passively) terrorize a barber, seeming to forget that I paid for the service of a haircut.

Apparently I am going a bit grey at the temples. Hmm. Does it actually look dignified?   
Hmmmmm.

Maybe I should call him. At a variety of different times, carefully charted. And if I record the calls I can analyse them as well, which would rule out any interference of that horribly toxic radio equipment that seems to have no effect on him (I have noticed the absence of radiation poisoning symptoms associated with acute or chronic exposure, and the turnover rate for interns makes it difficult to conclude much of anything from their health). I’m sure I can find several exclusively professional reasons to be in touch in order to gather my data.

 

Okay Carlos, get it together. This is a professional call. This is about the clocks. Don’t get distracted. You can’t sit and listen to him talk all night, this is important. You need to _really focus_ because he will _not_ and is likely to try to ask you out again. Just tell him. You are not calling for personal reasons. Clocks, Carlos. That’s it. Clocks and clocks alone. Focus on the work. He’s the only one who can get this information out.

Right.  
 _Clocks._

 

So I think there are, like, varying scales of normalcy in this town. For example, there’s everyone-normal: sunlight, the smell of coffee, the risk of throat-spiders. And then there’s Night Vale-normal: the varying non-sky colors of the sky, a five-headed dragon evading police, the hooded figures, waiting for the weather forecast to end before conversation continues.

But Cecil-normal is, like, it’s own thing. I have been watching him, in a totally casual yet professional manner, when we happen to be around each other in the same room through coincidence. The mark on his forehead is an eye and it looks like purple paint. His sartorial choices veer wildly between well-fitted-slightly-anachronistic-business-wear and ????? with no in between. He is one of only two masculine-identified people I have seen successfully pull off legwear involving cats. I have, on one occasion, seen him answer a question before it was actually asked, although the person who failed to ask was Josie, and frankly that atypical behavior could have come from either of them.

And—okay, this is going to sound weird and I might not believe it when I read it over later but I have observed this with my own eyes. Future-Carlos, this is evidence. Anecdotal, sure, but given the need to maintain a certain detachment I don’t think it would be wise to try gathering more evidence, and anyway there is a lot of work to do as it is. So just, take my word on this, me.

I have reason to believe that Cecil’s height is not consistent. I have seen him get a bag of sugar from a top shelf at the Ralph’s with no assistance (unfortunately he noticed I was there, went scarlet and dropped the bag, then winked, which distracted me from further observation). Yet on another occasion, I watched him climb on a chair to pull a clock of roughly the same height as the shelf off of a wall at the radio station. He did not realize I was there, so I was able to make approximate calculations without distraction this time. It was a difference of at least several inches. Has anyone else noticed this? Why did it take me months to see this, despite having seen him in several contexts since I came to Night Vale? The only noticeable change was that one occasion involved his semi-formal work attire and the other…included furry pants.

Perhaps it’s the pants.  
Hmm.

 

I’ve never really been afraid of what I don’t understand. I’m afraid for what I don’t understand. I am so small and so finite, I am one man who has to sleep, I can’t see it all, I can’t do it all. When I was younger, I would sit with books about animals and touch the pages, wondering if there would still be elephants and penguins and tigers to see when I was old enough to buy my own plane tickets, I was awake in bed with my head under the pillow thinking of all the things I could never see, or touch, or fix.

I couldn’t pick a major. After all my coursework at school, someone eventually just shrugged and gave me a B.S. in Science. All science. Every science. I didn’t want to miss any of it!

I jumped into everything very quickly in college. I fell in love quickly and intensely and it took me a while to learn caution. I got tired of losing things, of love burning hot and fast and vanishing, parting kisses like ashes on my lips. I can’t help it. I have people, I lose them, I’m too much, I talk too much, I’m too busy, I’m too intense, I’m too excited. So I’ve kept my eyes down at my work. I’ve been afraid to look up again since I graduated.

Each time you lose someone, they take a little piece of you with them and I’m afraid of losing more of me. I make the best goddamn alfredo sauce most people have ever tasted, I can bake a pie from scratch without overworking the dough and making it all tough, I have coworkers who respect me and think I’m brave—maybe foolishly so. What do I need with close friends? With lovers? What good is a soft touch to me, an unregulated rush of chemicals in my brain telling my stomach to flutter, my hands to reach forward and gently cradle something I am perceiving as precious? Especially when I know it’ll crumble in my fingers and blow away on the wind just as soon as I stop being afraid for it?

I can’t keep my head down here—  
Everyone is so interesting! That elderly woman, Josie, is friends with people who may or may not actually be angels (I haven’t had the chance to interview them myself so I can’t be sure). The earth shakes violently, according to all readings, and no one notices. The tarantula population is the subject of an outreach program! Most cities entirely neglect their arachnid neighbors.

And I looked up from my work and I saw a face and I started watching because it was a cute face and I convinced myself that I could keep it to mere curiosity and now my chest is supertight and I can’t get anything done because I am so scared. I am not in love yet and I can’t really afford to be right now because I can’t lose any more—

I can’t lose the unselfconscious sigh when he refers to me on the radio, seeming not to notice that nearly everyone he knows is listening, including me. He calls me perfect, he calls me beautiful, and I’ve heard the way he talks about the barber and Mr. Carlsberg and to hear him spit my name out like a cherry pit would break off a piece of me I’m not sure I could do without.

I don’t know if he’s more persuasive than average. I don’t know why his height seems to fluctuate. I don’t even know his last name yet. It was stupid for me to think there was any kind of detachment in the way I watched him. This was not clinical observation.

I did that thing again where I see someone and I start to learn them and I need to know everything, where I file details away based on how charming they are, where I pretend my daydreams are hypotheses.

He hasn’t mentioned me on the radio in a couple weeks. Maybe he’s over it. We haven’t even been alone together anywhere, not even a coffee shop or diner or something. So maybe I can still prevent the worst from happening.

There are tears on my notes, smudging the ink I’ve manufactured once I learned pens and pencils were forbidden. Calm down. Recopy the damaged notes. Put on a pot of coffee. Work until you fall asleep at the desk. You will feel better.

 

I don’t know if I can trust my own motives anymore.

I crept into a hole under a bowling alley. I was attacked by tiny people. There was no reason why I should have done that, except that I was the only one willing to go instead of sitting around in fear looking hesitantly downwards.

It looks like I have more in common with the citizens of Night Vale than I thought. They tend to keep their heads down too. They’re scared to move. They go about their business.

He thinks I’m brave. I flapped someone who seemed unflappable.

Unflappable may be a slight exaggeration. Perhaps “difficult to flap” is more accurate—  
 _God Carlos these are the least useful digressions of your career_

I’m glad I called. I shouldn’t have called. I’m afraid of myself, I don’t know myself. There’s a difference between the standard bravery of a scientist and taking stupid chances because there’s no one to stop me, to remind me that I have needs outside of this craving to know and understand and sort through the universe and look at every piece.

There’s a bloody lab coat in the corner and I have definitely wrecked a pair of suspenders. I know what happened, but there’s a blank spot, there are details missing. I know that someone else died in my place and who it was. I know there was enough blood lost that someone thought I was dead, I know that whoever it was thought to get in touch with the radio station first. Because whoever it was thought Cecil had a right to know. I almost died and someone else is gone. It’s frightening to think about  
So I won’t.

I came home, I bandaged wounds in a daze and super-glued a few lacerations. I would have advised someone else to go to the hospital, now that I think of it. I changed into the first thing I came across in a still unpacked box.

I’ve been here a year and I’m still unpacking.

I combed my hair. Inhaled. Exhaled. Washed my hands again because they still felt sticky.

He met me far sooner than I thought he would. I sat on the back of the car and thought. _Be mindful. Watch the lights. Don’t think about them. Don’t be afraid. Just find beauty._ When he approached he was smoothing down his hair and his eyes were still a little puffy from crying. His tie was crooked. This was the least composed I’d seen him in the year since I arrived.

We sat and watched the lights. I don’t remember what was said, but I remember the tones. Gentleness. Disbelief. Nervousness. I looked up at the lights to give him some privacy when I heard one relieved sob burst out, and then a deep breath punctuated by a sniff and a clearing of his throat.

I had nothing to say. I let my mind idle for once as we watched the stars.

It seemed safe to look over again, and I noticed that I was being watched carefully from the corner of his eye. His lips were slightly parted and his tongue poked out a little. He caught my look. His eyes darted away and then back. He smiled.

My hands were shaking again, or maybe they had never stopped. What did I have to lose?  
I set my hand on his knee  
and he looked at it and then looked at me and like, chuckled a little?  
And he nuzzled my shoulder and then just sort of rested there and we watched the lights and he is so warm and he made this little contented sound—  
I was not instantly in love. But.

 

Work is going really well! The trees in Grove Park are really weird. I mean, comparatively they fit right in, but these are not trees I’m familiar with, even in my relatively limited knowledge of botany. My centrifuge has started making weird sounds, though, and I’m missing a few highlighters.

I finished unpacking.

I’m trying to spend more time away from my work, but I need to be doing something at all times because it’s really unsettling when I’m alone and my mind wanders and I think about the things I don’t remember and my chest starts to get tight and I need to lay my head on the table until I can think of something else.

Okay, so this is the first time I’ve tried to move slowly and it’s really hard because it is increasingly obvious that Cecil is mid-cannonball whether the water is deep enough for it or not and—I’m not sure where to take this metaphor from here. I probably should have started it earlier in the sentence. And I’m still figuring him out, still watching. Most of that’s fun though. Sometimes he can get the bottle of gin he keeps over his fridge with a slight stretch, sometimes he pops up on his toes just a little to kiss my cheek. His skin is consistently warmer than average. He often paints his nails. He has a truly ridiculous number of patterned shirts. He eats peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon.

He sent me a picture he drew of the office cat. Now, I’d accepted the existence of a hovercat stuck four feet in the air of a men’s restroom. I wasn’t going to ask too many questions about how a tomcat had produced a litter of kittens (and I certainly wasn’t going to sneeze my way through the station bathroom to see if he was, in fact, a tomcat). But that picture, it wasn’t…what usually comes to mind when someone says “cat”. I try to be pretty open minded about this stuff given where I live now, but seriously?

He texted flirtatiously and asked me to come over after he got out of work. We sat and talked, then he eyed me coyly over his slightly chipped coffee mug. He does this thing where when there’s a little drip of coffee down the side of the mug, he licks it off instead of letting it dry on the side. And that’s really cute. Anyway. He said, “Did you get my picture?”

“Oh, yeah!” I said. “Very well done, and, uh, he is cute. But Cecil. Listen.”

“Yes?”

“I know you’re not usually a cat person.”

“No, but he is such a sweetie. You should hear him purr. Ah, precious.”

“So is this…your first experience with cats? Like, seeing them face-to-face?”

His face hardened and his glare could have stripped the paint off the wall. “No, Carlos. I have seen cats before. I have seen _many_ cats. I have seen more cats than you could possibly _imagine_.”

“And how many of those had, um, the spines?”

“He was a stray, we didn’t exactly get to pick the breed.” He got up to refill his mug, making a little more noise than was necessary and spilling a bit of coffee on the counter.

So I guess he was pretty upset. I apologized, although I wasn’t sure why that touched a nerve. I think it falls in the gap between Night Vale-normal and Cecil-normal, like how he keeps all his mirrors covered, and I don’t think he really wants to talk about those things.

 

Last night he slept over again and it was amazing and I made waffles this morning for breakfast and it was so fucking great.

I’m still not letting my guard down too much. And I think he’s a little more secretive than I thought as well. Like last night, we were sitting together on my couch and kind of creeping towards each other like high school kids worried about someone’s parents coming home. He kept pretending to pick lint off my sweater vest and reverting to just the tiniest bit of silliness to mask his nervousness. Touches were lingering.

I reached over and brushed the back of my hand just on his cheek, really gently (I’d intended a more substantial touch but got nervous at the last moment, although the way his breath caught juuuust a little bit makes me think it worked out a little romantically). I tried to brush his hair from his forehead but he pulled back. “You probably shouldn’t,” he said.

“Oh. Sorry.”

He looked away, swinging his feet back off the couch and pulling off his socks with his toes, folding them together in a way I still haven’t figured out. He kept the bundle pinched between his toes and swung his foot a few times.   
(He can’t stand when his feet get too warm and I like that he’s comfortable enough in my home to do something like that.)

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s for protection.”

“From what?”

He looked at me a moment like he didn’t understand, then blinked and waved dismissively. “Oh, you know,” he said with an excessively casual laugh. “Just try not to smudge it!”

I mean really, where was I supposed to go with that? The perpetual-student part of my brain took over and I started babbling all this nonsense about the evil eye and protective amulets and the wide variety of cultures that had a similar belief system and I just could not make myself stop talking because it was too late and I had to find a way to end the story like I’d meant to start telling it, because if I just stopped talking it would call attention to the fact that none of this should have been happening.

He was looking at me, but I don’t think he was paying much attention (or he’d noticed panic in my eyes) because he slipped his glasses off and set them on my coffee table. He leaned forward with an almost feline slink. “Carlos? Why are you going on and on about curses when you could—could be—kiss-ing me…?” I think his confidence faltered by the end of the sentence and his voice was pitched up a bit and I wondered if his mouth had run away from him a little too.

We stared at each other a minute. And then—like an idiot—I just said “Yes,” which was how I felt but definitely not appropriate in context. So I just gave up on conversation and kissed him before we could get ourselves into any more tough spots.

I mean from there things were definitely much more fun and I like him so much but  
I can’t help but wonder what he needs to be protected from.

 

Had a chat with the Sheriff’s Secret Police tonight about our lazy Sunday morning. We sat in the back of a van with no windows, probably driving in circles, with black hoods on. Thankfully Cecil was able to convince them that we were innocent. Apparently, starting at 11:26 am, they overheard what sounded like an unlicensed exorcism.  
It was not.

He asked if I wanted to stay over again but after that I had to turn him down. Made it back home with minimal bruising though, and I hope they’ll monitor the bugs more closely to prevent this happening again.

 

Something happened to me today.   
I had to research it, because I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist. I am a scientist.

It may have been a panic attack but it’s hard to tell because the experience was so subjective, so…???

Or maybe I just don’t want it to be that bad? I don’t know. Now it doesn’t seem like it was that serious, but at the time I was pretty sure I was dying.

I fixed the centrifuge.

I don’t want to tell Cecil about what happened today.

 

He’s been wearing the watch every day pretty much since I gave it to him, and it makes me feeling fucking fantastic.

Last night we went out to dinner to celebrate six months together (he insists on saying it’s an anniversary but the prefix implies “year” and it’s only been half a year and he won’t accept “our .5 anniversary” as a compromise) and we walked to the Arby’s parking lot and sat on some rocks and watched the lights like we did on the night after—

Well anyway we sat and passed his flask of whiskey back and forth, and he was giddy and telling me more of his moon jokes and I felt light and happy and I almost said the word _love_ but I didn’t quite have the nerve yet. So instead I made some stupid joke about truffles and he laughed so hard he almost fell off the rock and I had to grab him by the back of his aggressively orange shirt and pull him back to safety.

He sighed and rubbed his face against my shoulder. I looked down at him. He’d been pretty short for most of the day.

A moment passed in contented silence. “It doesn’t protect me from anything,” he said at once, while I was still looking for the right way to frame the question. “Think of it like a plug. In a bathtub. What it really does is protect you from me. In a way.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. “Oh,” was what came out. “So, I mean—god, there’s no way to ask this question—”

“—what am I?” His voice was flat. He could have been reading the traffic report.

“Yeah. I guess. I’m sorry, it is a horrible question.”

He moved back and looked at me. “Guess what, babe. I dunno.” His voice was still flat and slow, and he was trying to smile but it wasn’t quite working. “I have no idea. If my mother knew, she never explained anything, just warned me about the mirror thing and whatever.”

“What about your father?”

“Yeaaah, I never met him. Which is weird because I think he lived with us for at least ten years? We just never ran into each other, I think.” He sipped from the flask and shrugged. “I know that whatever it is, it’s…dark. And puberty made it worse because let’s be honest, that makes everything worse. I know I was born on one of the days the sun didn’t come up. Maybe I’m why. Ha!” there wasn’t much joy in the laugh. He pointed to his forehead again. “Mostly void, partially Palmer.”

And then we stared at each other for a moment.

I still don’t know. Is he human? A bit? Something else entirely?

I reached for his hand, always so incredibly warm, his palms always a little moist. I held it in my own. “Okay.”

Does it matter? I don’t think so. The world is a great, big, wonderful place. Octopi are capable of unscrewing the lid on a jar from the inside. This very town contained a non-existent house that my team and I were still carefully prodding. I looked up at the unknown lights and held the very warm hand in mine.

I don’t know what you are, Cecil, but I know who you are.

**Author's Note:**

> There might be a little more to this, there might not be.


End file.
